Once Upon a Sure Thing (Heartbreakers #2)

I’m dead.

Just fucking dead with desire for her, and when the next line comes around about how I’d run to her, I go all in. I grab her waist, threading one hand around her hip, and pull her close, singing about looking into her eyes.

In hers, I see the same fire and heat that burns through me.

And just like that, I know we’re in this together. We’re performing. We finish the song, barely any space between us, and it’s hot as hell.

She thrusts her arms into the air. “That was amazing. See? You let go and got into it. That’s how I do my audiobooks. I tell myself I’m Princess Malindia, and I’m vanquishing all my enemies.”

God, I want to vanquish her.

I want to conquer her in my bed, and on my kitchen counter, and in the shower . . .

We rehearse a few more songs, and when afternoon rolls around, Jackson arrives. He shoots some footage of us prepping, then we decide to tackle our original song one more time.

He joins us in the studio, but I pretend he doesn’t exist. I sing to Ally, only she’s not Ally. She’s Honey, this brand-new woman, and I don’t take my eyes off her.

She doesn’t look away either. Those sapphire eyes pin me the whole time, and when we hit the chorus, I’m on fire.

Flames lick my neck, and my blood heats, roaring to temperatures I’ve never experienced before. Call the fire department. When I sing the words about making her mine, I go bigger, yank her close, and I swear no one else is here. When we near the end, I let instinct take over. I thread my hand around her neck, and her breath catches as I sing the last words. I run my hand up into her fake blonde hair. She gasps, and I growl.

Everything goes quiet as the notes fade out.

Jackson clears his throat. “Want me to get a fire extinguisher?”



*

An hour later, Jackson waves like a madman from the booth, calling Ally and me over. He points wildly to his phone. “Dude. You have to see this. This is on fleek.”

“Courtesy to speak English.”

“It means on fire,” Ally says.

Jackson stabs the screen. “I posted it to YouTube. It has sixteen hundred views in thirty minutes. Look at the comments.”



Must leave work now to go jump my BF.

I just combusted.

OVARIES!!!!!!

That song is hot, but the way they look at each other is hotter.



Ally turns to me, wide-eyed. “Virtue Moir,” she whispers, wonder in her voice.

“What’s that?”

She fans her face with her hand then grabs my shoulder. “They think we’re Virtue Moir.”

“Courtesy to speak English.”

Ally’s words tumble out in a rush. “They’re a Canadian ice-dancing couple from the recent Olympics. Audiences obsessed over them. They’re crazy talented, and they’re also beautiful and sexy, and he skated with her like he was in love with her.”

I wrench back when she says those words.

She rolls her eyes and laughs, slugging my arm. “Don’t worry. I know you’re not in love with me. But he skated with her like that. It was gorgeous, and you couldn’t look away.” She raises her hand to her neck and drags her fingers along her skin. “He’d kiss her neck and run his hands down her arms,” she says, and I can’t look away from her hand. I want to travel where those fingers are visiting. I want my lips to map that path. “He’d lift her high above his head, and when he lowered her, he’d stare at her like he wanted to rip her clothes off.”

I understand this man completely.

I want to know what Ally looks like under those jeans. What color panties she’s wearing. If they’re tiny and pink and covered with hearts. If they’re wet. How she looks when I tug them off her.

“And that worked for them?” I rasp.

“Audiences went wild. They were the talk of the games.”

She grabs her phone and does a quick search right here in the booth, showing me video after video, gif after gif of the skating duo. Holy fuck. She’s right. They’re so hot, they’re turning me on, and I’m not into ice dancing.

But it’s true—you can’t take your eyes off them because he skates with her like it’s foreplay. Like he wants to take her home and strip her. Hell, he skates like he wants to take her right there on the ice.

She’s the same with him. She cups his cheek in a desperate sort of way, threads her hand in his hair, and her lips seem to beg his for a kiss.

“Um, two thousand views. And more comments,” Jackson announces, thrusting his phone at us, scrolling over the comments on our video.



Aretheyoraren’tthey?

OMG, they’re so pretty . . .

He is going to have her for dinner tonight.



I turn to Ally, blinking in surprise, wondering how they read my mind.

Use it.

I take her hand, lead her back to the studio, and launch right into “Need You Now” with her once more, since she secured the rights for us to sing this tune.

I play for the camera the whole time, singing to her, touching her shoulder, her hair, her hip. I go for broke at the end. After I finish my last line and the music carries us, I brush my lips to her neck. She shivers in my arms, a tremble that I swear moves through her whole body. I drag my lips lower down her neck till she lets out a soft gasp. It turns me on ferociously.

The tiniest gasp escapes her lips, a sound so soft, a noise so sensual, it sends a fresh wave of heat through my body.

I should stop, but I don’t. I kiss the hollow of her throat. She trembles against my lips, and even though we’re not alone, it feels entirely private—this kiss, her reaction, my desire. It feels like ours alone, whether the camera is rolling or not.

It makes me want to kiss her senseless.

But you always leave the audience wanting more. Slowly, I pull away, my lips already missing her skin.

Her eyes float closed for a moment as she sings the last words. When she opens them, I wonder if she’s acting too.

Or if everything just got real.





Chapter 16





Ally



That two thousand views in an hour multiplied.

Exponentially.

What started as a let’s-post-this-online experiment has steamrolled. I know the drill, since I’ve been here with Kirby. But it wasn’t our first YouTube video that took off like proverbial wildfire. It was our seventeenth.

This time, the first one with Miller is a hot, sexy charm. And so’s the second, when Jackson posts the next day with another song Miller wrote and tweaked for us.

Now, three days later, those two thousand views have avalanched into half a million views. The second video? It’s riding the coattails at a hefty 350,000 views already.

The comments are endless, a river of Whoa, is it hot in here, Mr. Hot Stuff and the sexy blonde, and Hashtag ZimmerHart.

I can’t complain, and neither will my bank account. The money is a trickle now, but as the views grow, so will the ad dollars, and every little bit helps when you have someone besides yourself to look out for. I shoot Miller a quick note while walking home on Saturday evening after picking up Vietnamese sandwiches for dinner with Chloe.



Ally: This is amazing! We need to keep this up!





Miller: I’m on the piano as we speak.





Miller: Well, I’m not literally on the piano. If I were a cat, I’d be on the piano. I'm not a cat.





Ally: Thank you for the clarification. I did wonder.





Miller: Technically, I was typing on the phone. But my ass is on the piano bench, and my fingers are on the keys. And I'm purring . . .





Ally: Meow. Keep going, pussycat! We have fans already! Eeek, fans!





After dinner, Chloe heads to the shower, and I read the comments on our videos once more, shaking my head in amazement. It really does seem the internet likes what Miller and I have going on—our music, our songs, but especially our chemistry.

So does Macy.

As I make a pot of tea, my phone pings with a text from her.



Macy: Damn, woman. Have you seen these videos? I think I’m pregnant from just watching you and Miller.





Ally: When you have your second baby, please name it Immaculate.





Macy: Oh, sorry. What did you say? I just jumped your brother. We’re having twins.